Yesterday’s Zippy takes us to Alfred Harvey’s comics and (via the strip’s title) to Fred Harvey’s railway depot restaurants:
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First, the allusions in the panels, to Casper, the Friendy Ghost; Little Lotta; Richie Rich; and Little Dot. Then the Harvey Girls.
For Graduation Day (which is, in fact, today at Stanford), a wry Doonesbury in which Chris Simm, a dropout from Walden College and a business success, comes back to get an honorary degree (along with the rest of his original class):
“A surge-pricing app for mobile sex workers”, thereby remedying “an inefficient industry”: wonderful.
Today’s Zits features Jeremy, his buddy Hector, and his dad:
In panel 1, Jeremy introduces two entities into the discourse: (E1) the dead squirrel and (E2) the engine of the van that Jeremy and Hector share.
The in panel 2 come two anaphoric elements: (A1) the definite pronoun it from Jeremy’s dad and (A2) the indefinite pronoun one from Jeremy. In principle, (A1) could pick out either (E1) or (E2) as its referent, but on the grounds of real-world plausibility, (E1) is incredibly unlikely (dead squirrel running?), so (E2) it is.
(A2) could also in principle pick out either (E1) or (E2), but here things get complicated; remember that this is a cartoon.
Today’s Zippy takes us to the Hostess Snack Forest, where we can stand in awe of the giant chocolate cylinders filled with white creamy delight:
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Let’s just register the impressive phallicity of the Hostess Ho Ho and move on to other things.
Fathers Day comes on the 19th. For the occasion, a Tom Toro cartoon that didn’t get into my earlier posting about him:
Well, there can be literally only one greatest dad in the world, but then not all language is literal — as in this case, where the sentiment on the mug is a piece of hyperbole, exaggeration for effect.
Today’s Doonesbury, with a musical allusion:
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Every little breeze seems to whisper “Louise.”
Birds in the trees seem to twitter “Louise.”
Each little rose
Tells me it knows I love you, love you.
Caught in the May 9th New Yorker, this Tom Toro cartoon:
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A little slideshow on time adverbials and the times they refer to, understood figuratively.
Toro hasn’t appeared on this blog before, but he’s a prolific cartoonist with an ear for language and an inclination to play with classic cartoon memes (like the desert island or, as below, penguins and their discriminability).
… and cartooning — telling a story through pictures in sequence — and story inflation.
Today’s Bizarro, with another variant of the caveman cartoon meme:
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
In panel 1, at the top, Caveman 1 tells Caveman 2 the story of a hunt, exhibiting a trophy (which looks a lot like a squirrel). In panel 2, Caveman 2 reports the story in a painting that, um, expands some on the original account, now involving large horned mammals (well, if it’s not true, it’s a good story).
Will Leben commenting in Facebook yesterday about the June 9th issue of the New York Review of Books, with a drawing of Noam Chomsky on the cover:
This meaty review [“A Case Against America” by Kenneth Roth, review of Noam Chomsky’s “Who Rules the World?”] rightly takes Chomsky to task for cherry-picking facts and for sometimes getting them wrong. Also included, the most hideous, cartoonish drawing of him in print.
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The review is critical of Chomsky, but (as several commenters have observed) not as critical as it might have been. As for the drawing, as I noted on Facebook:
The drawing is indeed cartoonish; it’s a caricature, by the NYRB‘s current resident caricarturist, James Ferguson (succeeding David Levine, who did many thousands of caricatures over the years), Caricatures aren’t portraits in any ordinary sense; they’re intentionally exaggerated and mean to evoke character or highlight notable characteristics of their subjects. Many are affectionate, like Al Hirschfield’s theatrical caricatures in the NYT; on the other hand, some political caricatures (like Thonas Nast’s) are savage. In the NYRB, getting a caricature, rather than a photo, is a sign that you’re a Person of Significance.
